Vineya Public Service Announcement Caught on Fire

Vineya released a Public Service Announcement that has caught on fire! The intention behind this PSA is to focus on encouraging the community to push for certified interpreters. Many people have stood resistance to the idea of requesting “certified” interpreters because often certified doesn’t always mean qualified. Unfortunately it is not common knowledge that for RID certifications the minimum standard that the interpreter needs to meet is to be able to interpret college 101 classes with enough competency for the student to understand.

With certification requirements, comes accountability and when somebody is out there interpreting without a certification, they are not being held accountable. If something were to happen to a patient during a doctors visit because the interpreter did not understand that they were allergic to penicillin and an uncertified interpreter did not relay that information accurately, they wouldn’t be held accountable by a certifying organization or system. There is no oversight over uncertified interpreters in some states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Maryland, DC, Virginia, Ohio and more states. Certified interpreters report to a certification organization and if there are issues, the interpreter can lose their certification and/or licensure if they reside in a state that requires strict licensure laws.

As a community, allowing individuals that are not certified to work as interpreters, is to not practice community accountability and that is exactly what Vineya is trying to get people to do. Vineya is not an interpreting agency, they focus on providing platforms for interpreters, however the team consists of 100% deaf individuals. Certification and licensure laws are important to the team which is why they are encouraging people to utilize certified interpreters not uncertified interpreters. The more people band together and refuse to use uncertified interpreters, the less jobs out there for uncertified interpreters.

When interpreters are not certified, then systems that recognize RID or BEI can not hold them accountable through CEU requirements, mediation, or any other possible resolutions that they may have to remedy the situation with the interpreter.

Shane Feldman, the Director of Vineya, said, “Without certification, Deaf consumers are not protected. Uncertified interpreters will not change their decision to protect Deaf consumers until we demand certified interpreters. We have a responsibility as a community and to each other to request only certified interpreters each and every time we ask for an interpreter.”